GHSA-c9p4-xwr9-rfhx is a high-severity (CVSS 7.3) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in zotregistry.dev/zot. A fix is available for zotregistry.dev/zot — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Zot IdP group membership revocation ignored
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-c9p4-xwr9-rfhx.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-c9p4-xwr9-rfhx plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,333 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
zotregistry.dev/zotReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Summary
The group data stored for users in the boltdb database (meta.db) is an append-list so group revocations/removals are ignored in the API.
Details
SetUserGroups is alled on login, but instead of replacing the group memberships, they are appended. This may be due to some conflict with the group definitions in the config file, but that wasn't obvious to me if it were the case.
PoC
Login with group claims, logout, remove the user from a group from at IdP and log in again, the API still grants access and the new list of groups is appended creating meaningless duplicate entries and no longer mathing the expected groups from the IdP. The behavior can be verified by seeing the API or UI still presenting images it should not or by viewing the data directly: bbolt get meta.db UserData <user>, eg:
Note this example also has duplicates due to group hierarchy changes that were left in the database.
Impact
Any Zot configuration that relies on group-based authorization will not respect group remove/revocation by an IdP.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | zotregistry.dev/zot | all versions | 2.1.2go get zotregistry.dev/zot@v2.1.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for zotregistry.dev/zot, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update zotregistry.dev/zot to 2.1.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-c9p4-xwr9-rfhx is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-c9p4-xwr9-rfhx can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-c9p4-xwr9-rfhx. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-c9p4-xwr9-rfhx in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-c9p4-xwr9-rfhx across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.